Just Saying “No”: The Solution to Social and Moral Disorder

A friend and I were eating at a coffee shop in my neighborhood in Manhattan’s Bloomingdale section (that is, the ‘Upper’ Upper West Side between 96th and 110th Street). Near us at a table next to a window facing Broadway was a proper-looking young black woman with two little white boys who were sitting across from her. The boys were talking quite loudly, making disruptive sounds, moving around a lot, and so on. In the manner of modern parents, the nanny repeatedly said “shh,” but her charges completely ignored her and—again in the manner of modern parents—she didn’t seem to mind that they were ignoring her. After a few minutes of this I got her attention and politely but directly asked her to quiet the boys down. And here is where her behavior departed from that of the typical Upper West Side parent: instead of getting indignant at my request, she responded positively. She took the younger boy, who had been making most of the noise, and set him down next to her for a while. She seemed to be saying something to him, I’m not sure, I wasn’t paying attention for a few minutes. Then he went back next to his brother, across from the nanny, and his whole behavior had changed, he was still talking, though less animatedly and loudly. Even when the boys played with each other, their voices were quiet. The whole edginess and “demandingness” that was there before had disappeared

Not only did this restore a sense of peace and order to the restaurant, which was a relief, but it also seemed that the boys themselves were more content now and were actually enjoying themselves more, not less. It’s always assumed in modern America (or at least in the parts of America that are under the cultural influence of New York and Hollywood) that making lots of noise is the essence of “expressing yourself,” of “enjoying life,” and that anyone who tells young people to lower their voices in a public place is being somehow “anti-life.” The typical response by a New York parent who is asked to keep his or her child from talking loudly or climbing over seats or jumping up and down is to say sharply, as if it’s an obvious fact that only an idiot would not understand: “He’s a child, that’s what children do.” The assumption is that it’s normal for children to behave in an uncontrolled and socially inconsiderate way around adults, and that anyone who thinks otherwise is the abnormal one. This is false. The reality is that when children are more self-controlled they are happier. But when they are “acting out,” they are just giving way to nervous aggressive energy and are less happy. The “happiness” of making lots of noise and moving restlessly around in a public setting is a false happiness. It is the false happiness of liberalism. It is the “fulfillment” of a human self that is understood as a mere jumble of chaotic impulses.

Also, as my friend pointed out, asking the child to control his behavior makes him feel more grownup, whereas letting him behave without restraints leaves him feeling disconnected from the grownup world. The child’s noise and disruptiveness is actually a demand for attention. So, when the adult takes the child seriously and tells the child clearly and firmly to quiet down, the child has gotten the attention he wants. The self-control he then exercises is thus an aspect of the relationship with the adult that was his real object all along. That relationship is being denied him when the adult, in the interests of the child’s “freedom,” lets him act out.

As Jim Kalb has written, when liberals tell people that they can do whatever they want, they are depriving them of what they really want, which is to act in accordance with the good.

The other lesson here was how easy it was for the nanny to get the boy to change his behavior, once she had gotten the message from another adult that it was desirable to do so. As I’ve said before, at least one half of our modern social and political ills are simply due to the decades-long failure of people to say “no” to things that they ought to say “no” to, whether it is Palestinian terrorism, or black people making insane demands and accusations against society, or unassimilable immigrants flooding into our country, or the major news media spreading lies and propaganda, or the entertainment industry routinely broadcasting filthy transgressions into the homes of America, or middle-class parents permitting their children to behave disruptively in public. The simple act of saying “no,” and meaning it, restores moral order and instantly transforms the situation for the better.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 06, 2002 02:07 PM | Send